


a question, an answer

by venusiaries



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Angst, Drabble, M/M, NGE series universe, bec god knows the movie series is like a whole other alt universe, short shinji introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 03:00:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14511069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venusiaries/pseuds/venusiaries
Summary: what Kaworu is, he’ll never truly know.





	a question, an answer

**Author's Note:**

> so i'm emptying my drafts bec why the heck not, and then i find this semi-finished drabble that i wrote just after i finished the NGE series and i was like taken aback by how nice i actually wrote it? theory is that i'm probably a thousand times better at writing when i'm super emo
> 
> so yeah here y'all go

what kaworu is, he’ll never truly know.

 

It’s not as if Shinji doesn’t think about  _ who _ Kaworu is, but he doesn’t like to dwell on those thoughts, usually. It’s better to know him as he is now, in the light of the moment, as a kinetic being changing with every move, every gentle smile.

 

He is an enigma, and Shinji avoids the thoughts in his head that tell him to understand, to pick apart, in fear of becoming too attached to something that could fall right out of his grasp and take his heart with it.

 

_ What _ Kaworu is, however, is distinctly different from asking the ‘ _ who _ ’, since he is in a completely different league than any other person he’s come to superficially know. He inspires feelings within Shinji that fill him up in strange, alien ways, and it seems the gravitational pull he feels at a glance from Kaworu’s eyes is strong and electric enough that Shinji is warm to his fingertips. He’s alien, foreign,  _ strange _ , and yet so, so attractive.

 

It drives Shinji near-mad, how Kaworu both repels him and draws him so tightly around his delicate fingers.

 

“I love you,” Kaworu says one night, when they are side-by-side in the public baths, and he says it so surely than it takes Shinji’s breath away with the force of it. It takes everything within Shinji to stay static, stay  _ absolutely still _ , in fear of both breaking the moment and lengthening it, like the silence is enough to encapsulate the time in resin, stored away into his mind like a precious but grave secret.

 

He says nothing, but Kaworu’s smile never falters, never bitters, like he gives love and doesn’t expect it to return. Shinji’s heart twinges in his chest.

 

Later, they whisper to each other in the dark of Kaworu’s room, and Shinji will tell him things he’s never wanted to open up about before, because Kaworu draws it out of him with a single request, and he is weak to that sureness in his gaze. They stare at each other like its a normal thing to do, and Shinji flushes at the intimacy of their moment, but again Kaworu will smile at him the way that messes with the beat inside Shinji’s chest, and with a flush to his own cheeks he proclaims, “I think I was born to meet you.”

  
  
  


* * *

 

 

 

Later, in the quiet of the evening days after, looking out into the stillness of the lake they first saw each other, he will confess to Misato what he never had the courage to profess to Kaworu. He will embed his words with the emotion he never got to let Kaworu feel, and hopefully somewhere in a place Kaworu _ does  _ still exist, he will feel the tightness in Shinji’s throat, his heart shattering into a million pieces.

 

He wishes he never knew what Kaworu was.


End file.
